Entity Relationship Model

This chapter introduces the entity-relationship model in detail. The chapter

covers
numerous features of the model, several of which can be omitted depending on the
planned coverage of the course. Weak entity sets (Section 2.6), design constraints
(Section 2.7.4) and aggregation (Section 2.7.5), and the corresponding subsections
of
Section 2.9 (Reduction of an E-R Schema to Tables) can be omitted if time is
short. We
recommend covering specialization (Section 2.7.1) at least in some detail, since
it is
an important concept for object-oriented databases (Chapter 8).
The E-R model itself and E-R diagrams are used often in the text. It is important
that students become comfortable with them. The E-R model is an excellent context
for the introduction of students to the complexity of database design. For a given
enterprise there are often a wide variety of E-R designs. Although some choices
are
arbitrary, it is often the case that one design is inherently superior to another.
Several
of the exercises illustrate this point. The evaluation of the goodness of an E-R
design
requires an understanding of the enterprise being modeled and the applications to
be run. It is often possible to lead students into a debate of the relative merits
of
competing designs andthus illustrate by example thatunderstandingthe application
is often the hardest part of database design.
Considerable emphasis is placed on the construction of tables from E-R diagrams.
This serves to build intuition for the discussion of the relational model in the
subse
quent chapters. It also serves to ground abstractconcepts of entities and
relationships
into the more concrete concepts of relations. Several other texts places this
material
along with the relational data model, rather than in the E-R model chapter. Our mo
tivation for placing this material here is help students to appreciate how E-R data
models get used in reality, while studying the E-R model rather than later on.
The material on conversion of E-R diagrams to tables in the book is rather brief
in some places, the book slides provide better coverage of details that have been
left
implicit in the book.
7
8
Chapter 2
Entity Relationship Model
Changes from 3rd edition:
In the fourth edition we have updated several examples, including ternary rela
tions (employee, branch, job instead of customer, loan, branch) and aggregation
(manages
instead of loan-officer), to make them more realistic. We have also added more ex
amples, for instance for specialization we use person, customer and employee as the
main example, instead of account, checking-account and savings-account,whichalso
makes the example more realistic. We have replaced the US centric social-security
by
the more global (and more realistic) customer-id and employee-id.
Wehaveaddednotation tomakedisjointedness constraints and total participation
explicit (overlapping and partial participation are the default). We have
introduced
alternative E-R notations since many real world applications use alternative nota
tions. We have also provided a brief introduction to UML class diagrams, which are
 being used increasingly in place of E-R diagrams, in tools such as Oracle
designer.
Wehavedroppedcoverageofexistencedependenciessincetotalparticipationcon
straints provide a very similar constraint. The distinction between total
participation
and existence dependencies is too minor to be of practical use, and only confuses
students.
Design issues are discussed in more detail.
Exercises
9
address
driver-id
name
model
license
person
owns car
year
report-number
location
date
driver
participated
damage-amount
accident
Figure 2.1 E-R diagram for a Car-insurance company.
Exercises
2.1 Explain the distinctions among the terms primary key, candidate key, and su
perkey.
Answer: Asuperkey is a set of one or more attributes that, taken collectively, al
lows us to identify uniquely an entity in the entity set. A superkey may contain
extraneous attributes. If K is a superkey, then so is any superset of K.Asuperkey
for which no proper subset is also a superkey is called a candidate key.Itispos
sible that several distinct sets of attributes could serve as candidate keys. The
primary key is one of the candidate keys that is chosen by the database designer
as the principal means of identifying entities within an entity set.
2.2 Construct an E-R diagram for a car-insurance company whose customers own
one or more cars each. Each car has associated with it zero to any number of
recorded accidents.
Answer: See Figure 2.1
2.3 Construct an E-R diagram for a hospital with a set of patients and a set of
medi
cal doctors. Associate with each patient a log of the various tests and examina
tions conducted.
Answer: See Figure 2.2
2.4 A university registrar’s office maintains data about the following entities:
(a)
courses, including number, title, credits, syllabus, and prerequisites; (b) course
offerings, including coursenumber, year,semester,sectionnumber, instructor(s),
timings, and classroom; (c) students, including student-id, name, and program;
and (d) instructors, including identification number, name, department, and ti
tle. Further, the enrollment of students in courses and grades awarded to stu
dents in each course they are enrolled for must be appropriately modeled.
Construct anE-Rdiagramfortheregistrar’soffice.Document allassumptions
that you make about the mapping constraints.
Answer: See Figure 2.3.
In the answer given here, the main entity sets are student, course, course-
offering,
10
Chapter 2
Entity Relationship Model
insurance
name
ss#
test−log
test_id
date−admitted
date−checked−out
patients
test
performed_by
Dr−Patient
doctors
test_name
sid
student
program
name
dss#
date
time
result
name
Figure 2.2 E-R diagram for a hospital.
time
enrols
grade
syllabus
secno
course−
offerings
year
is
offered
room
teaches
semester
iid
specialization
name
requires
instructor
dept
courseno
prerequisite
maincourse
course
credits
title
Figure 2.3 E-R diagram for a university.
title
and instructor. The entity set course-offering is a weak entity set dependent on
course. The assumptions made are :
a. aclass meets only at one particular place and time. This E-R diagramcannot
model a class meeting at different places at different times.
b. There is no guarantee that the database does not have two classes meeting
at the same place and time.
2.5 Consider a database used to record the marks that students get in different ex
ams of different course offerings.
Exercises
11
sid
student
name
time
takes
secno
course−
room
offerings
program
marks
eid
year
semester
exam
name
time
place
Figure 2.4 E-R diagram for marks database.
courseno
a. Construct an E-R diagram that models exams as entities, and uses a ternary
relationship, for the above database.
b. Construct an alternative E-R diagram that uses only a binary relationship
between students and course-offerings. Make sure that only one relationship
exists between a particular student and course-offering pair, yet you can
represent the marks that a student gets in different exams of a course offer
ing.
Answer:
a. See Figure 2.4
b. See Figure 2.5
2.6 Construct appropriate tables for each of the E-R diagrams in Exercises 2.2 to
2.4.
Answer:
a. Car insurance tables:
person (driver-id, name, address)
car (license,year,model)
accident (report-number,date,location)
participated(driver-id, license, report-number, damage-amount)
b. Hospital tables:
patients (patient-id, name, insurance, date-admitted, date-checked-out)
doctors (doctor-id, name, specialization)
test (testid, testname, date, time, result)
doctor-patient (patient-id,doctor-id)
test-log (testid,patient-id) performed-by (testid,doctor-id)
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Chapter 2
Entity Relationship Model
sid
student
program
name
marks
time
takes
secno
course−
 offerings
year
room
semester
examof
exam
name
time
place
courseno
Figure 2.5 Another E-R diagram for marks database.
c. University registrar’s tables:
student (student-id,name,program)
course (courseno, title, syllabus, credits)
course-offering (courseno,secno,year, semester, time, room)
instructor (instructor-id, name, dept, title)
enrols (student-id,courseno,secno, semester,year,grade)
teaches (courseno,secno, semester,year, instructor-id)
requires (maincourse, prerequisite)
2.7 Design an E-R diagramfor keeping track of the exploits of your favourite
sports
team.You shouldstorethematchesplayed,the scoresin eachmatch,theplayers
in each match and individual player statistics for each match. Summary statis
tics should be modeled as derived attributes.
Answer: See Figure 2.6
2.8 Extend the E-R diagram of the previous question to track the same information
for all teams in a league.
Answer: See Figure 2.7 Note that a player can stay in only one team during a
season.
2.9 Explain the difference between a weak and a strong entity set.
Answer: A strong entity set has a primary key. All tuples in the set are distin
guishable by that key. A weak entity set has no primary key unless attributes of
the strong entity set on which it depends are included. Tuples in a weak entity
set are partitioned according to their relationship with tuples in a strong entity